Since just about anyone can find out all sorts of detailed information about you, consider that the best defense is a good offense.
Why You Should Spy on Yourself in the Wall Street Journal tells you how find out beforehand what a prospective employer, college admissions officer or others might reveal about you.
In a 2004 study by U.S. Public Interest Group found that 79% of consumer-credit reports contained at least one mistake.
1. Get your free annual credit report
The first step in running a background check on yourself: Order your credit report. These are from major credit-reporting agencies Equifax, TransUnion and Experian and can be obtained from www.annualcreditreport.com or 1-877-322-8228.
Check for unauthorized credit-card accounts and loans, bad addresses and unfamiliar names that could be evidence of identity theft. Notify the agencies and creditors if anything seems amiss.
The good news: Background reports prepared by agencies like these are regulated by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. As a result, you're supposed to be notified of the reason if a negative report results in a missed opportunity, giving you a chance to correct mistakes.
2. Do a pre-employment self check
While Choicetrust will give you a free annual report, expect to pay about $25 for a national criminal file check or $50 for a search that included employment or education verification that will include information from public records and some courts.
At Choicetrust you can also review credentials of health care professionals, verify nursing home credentials and check for lawsuits, liens and judgments against those you are thinking to employ.
Lexis-Nexus will also give you a free copy of information contained in a background screening report if you call 877-913-6245.
3. Do a Stolen ID search
StolenIDSearch.com, a new free service from TrustedID, lets you find out whether your Social Security or credit-card numbers are among some 2.3 million compromised pieces of identification in its database, which it obtains from organizations that compile lists of numbers recovered in fraud investigations.
--
4. Clean up unflattering online postings
Among the toughest problems to fix can be unflattering online postings. Even just a few years ago, no one would have worried about it. But the fact is, they can linger in cyberspace forever. ReputationDefender.com is designed to scour the Web for unflattering material about you, then will try to either have it removed or make it show up less prominently in search results.